Urbana students evacuated, several treated after gas leak

More than 40 Urbana High School students were evaluated and treated for carbon monoxide poisoning Friday morning after the district’s furnace system appears to have malfunctioned.

Firefighters evaluated at least 44 students for carbon monoxide poisoning and 12 of them were transported to Mercy Memorial Hospital in Urbana for additional treatment, Urbana Fire Chief Mark Keller said.

Some students didn’t initially report symptoms but complained later and were also taken by family members to the hospital. About four or five students showed clear signs of carbon monoxide poisoning, Keller said.

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The situation could have been even more serious, Keller said. Firefighters were initially called to the school shortly before 10 a.m. after receiving a complaint of a gas odor. When they arrived, they quickly found extremely high levels of carbon monoxide.

“You cannot smell carbon monoxide,” Keller said. “You can’t see it. There was an odor that prompted them to call us, and when we got in there with our monitors, we were able to determine we had extremely high levels of (gas). If that odor wasn’t there, we would have had an even more serious problem than we had.”

The monitors firefighters used provide an alarm at 35 parts per million, Keller said. The highest levels firefighters found Friday morning in the school’s castle complex were 250 ppm.

“At the levels we were at, it wouldn’t have taken too long before they could have had some major medical issues,” he said.

The building wasn’t heating properly and district staff called a company to repair the issue, Urbana City Schools Superintendent Charles Thiel said. They called firefighters after noticing a gas odor.

Firefighters didn’t determine the exact cause of the gas buildup, but Thiel said it might have been a faulty damper in the furnace system.

Students on the campus were evacuated to an auditorium area and were dismissed while the buildings were aired out. Additional tests were being conducted on the heating system Friday afternoon. Staff from Columbia Gas were also called to the scene to conduct additional testing.

Students complained of headaches, dizziness, burning eyes and mouths, and difficulty breathing, Keller said.

McKenzie King, a ninth grade student at the school, said she was in the library when she was told of the problem.

“People were lightheaded and some people had burning in their nose, mouth, stuff like that,” King said.

The district is undergoing a roughly $68 million project to build a new elementary school and a high school complex that’s expected to be completed in 2018.

“This is one of those issues that we’re dealing with,” he said. “There are systems and fan motors that are very old and that’s one of the reasons why we went to the community and asked for new buildings, and they were supportive.”

Repairs were completed Friday, Thiel said, and district has a staff work day on Monday so students won’t be at the school. Classes are expected to resume as normal on Tuesday.

Along with the Urbana Fire Division, medic units from Mechanicsburg, the JSP Joint Fire District and the Macochee Joint Ambulance District also responded.

“This hospital was overwhelmed with the number of patients who showed up at the door,” Keller said.

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